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The River Welland is a lowland river in the east of England. It runs for about 65 miles (105 km). It starts in the Hothorpe Hills near Sibbertoft in Northamptonshire. Then it heads east and north-east, passing places like Market Harborough, Stamford, Crowland, and Spalding, before reaching The Wash near Fosdyke. That route sounds simple.…
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Ayscoughfee Hall Museum and Gardens sits right in the middle of Spalding, yet it feels like a small escape hatch from the modern world. One moment we are near shops and roads. The next, we are under old trees, beside clipped hedges, and facing a medieval hall that looks politely unimpressed by the last few…
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Right in the middle of Spalding, tucked into Market Place, the South Holland Centre does a neat trick. It feels modern enough to host big touring acts, but local enough to feel like part of everyday town life. It is a theatre, a cinema, and a flexible events venue, all in one building. In a…
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Arts Council England, often shortened to ACE, is one of those bodies that most of us do not think about until we really, really have to. It sits behind a huge amount of what we see, hear, read, visit, and enjoy across England. It does this by investing public money from government and money raised…
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“The Tatler” is one of those names that still sounds busy. It hints at chatter. It hints at manners. It hints at people who know what everyone else is doing, and feel a mild duty to report it. In Britain, The Tatler first meant a London periodical launched by Richard Steele in April 1709. It…
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Some places celebrate spring with a polite nod and a cup of tea. Spalding, in South Holland, Lincolnshire, chose the louder option: a full parade of floats covered in flowers, rolling through town like a moving garden. The Spalding Flower Parade was held every year from 1959 to 2013, then returned in 2022 and has…
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Tulip bulbs look unimpressive. They are dry. They are papery. They are shaped like an onion that has been to a bad meeting. Then spring arrives, and they do what they do best. In the UK, tulip bulbs are one of the simplest ways to get big colour with very little fuss. We plant them…
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Boston in Lincolnshire is one of those English towns that looks modest on a map and then turns out to have fingerprints all over world history. It’s a flat-land market town with a big church, a busy river and fields of vegetables stretching out to the horizon – and it also lent its name to…
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A quiet corner where names change but the water keeps moving South of Lincoln, the River Witham slides through flat Lincolnshire fields, past drains, sluices and quiet villages. It keeps going, as rivers tend to do, until it reaches Boston. At that point something subtle but important happens. The river stops behaving like an inland…
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St Botolph’s Church sits on the river in Boston, Lincolnshire, and does not really bother with modesty. The tower climbs to about 266 feet, one of the tallest medieval parish church towers in England, and it rises from flat fenland so that it looks even taller again. Locals call it the Boston Stump. The nickname…
